


The Disappearance of Yamada Ryosuke

by bydinh



Category: Hey! Say! JUMP
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 10:46:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2649167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bydinh/pseuds/bydinh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The difference between happiness and contentment. (Done for yyexchange; utaite au)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Disappearance of Yamada Ryosuke

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this for Riko for yyexchange this year and due to lack of space in my drive, I've decided to just post it. (Shh, don't tell Riko (this isn't supposed to be posted until she posts the masterlist but I know she's busy so ;;).) Loosely based on Eight Hundred and Fake Lover. The lyrics at the end are from Fake Lover (if you can spot them ahAHHAHAHA QUOTE INTEGRATION TAKE THAT ENGLISH TEACHERS). The original posting is at thissss place: http://yyexchange.livejournal.com/8566.html.

The best thing about living in Tokyo is the lack of individuality, the dissipating of personal emotions and sensations, as each and every person melds into the crowd. How the concrete sidewalks were stained with feet yet clear of emotion; there was everyone yet there was no one. No one noticed each other, no one cared of the strangers that surrounded them. Day and night the noises of bustling crowds and honking cars disturbed the screaming silences of empty apartments, leaving no room for thought, no room for emotion. 

The best thing about living in Tokyo is the way people disappear.

Yamada fell in love with the invisibility that came along with walking with the crowd. He became accustomed with the numbness of knowing everyone and knowing no one, feeling everything and feeling nothing. He especially adored the easily ignored silence of his apartment with the liveliness of the city. The disappearance of Yamada Ryosuke was what he looked for and what he found in Tokyo.

However, Ryosuke thrived on attention. August 10th of 2010 marked the day of the utaite overnight sensation "Ryo". Two years later, his voice was sold through shows, cds, even widely viewed commercials, and he found the escape from the middle-of-nowhere town he grew up in. The day Ryosuke put foot onto Tokyo concrete and blended into the crowd, Yamada was happy.

Within the next year, Ryo's fanbase grew, as did the job opportunities. Revealing Ryo's identity became a popular demand, but Yamada refused. He was happy with the invisibility, happy with the loss of himself and his life purpose as an individual.

He was happy with the paradoxically insignificant yet known life he ghosted past the eyes of the public.

That was the plan: to milk the utaite cash cow and then find another pass time job that would allow robotic movements and invisibility from the wandering eyes of others. It wasn't hard, not with the quiet profile of Ryo and the almost rudely put-off-ness of the online persona that came along with the avoidance of contact with others. To the utaite's, Ryo was an egotistical and arrogant new comer with a superiority complex. As long as it kept him off the radar of contact, Yamada was happy. Whether having to be known as condescending or introverted, Yamada would act however accordingly he had to in order to block the extraneous eyes of other's.

The day that marked Ryo's 3rd year anniversary, a new utaite by the name “Yuu” showed up at his doorstep.

Yuu, a bright eyed, happily warm, and smiling individual that couldn't sense the despair from Yamada's trained apathetic face. Yuu, the incredibly charming and easy going boy that stood tall above Yamada but showed no sign of superiority. Yamada hated it, hated "Yuu", and everything that came along with him.

 

"I'm Yuto Nakajima, or Yuu, and I'm a huge, huge, huge fan of yours! Your avatar is really awesome and handsome and great but you're," Yuto stared at Yamada, a big, goofy grin on his face, "you're really beautiful!"

Yamada trembled, his fists clenched, as he tried to hold in the frown, the emotions of wanting to close the door and crawl into the depths of the apartment building, far, far away from the boy in front of him pried at the cracks between his fingers.

Yuto stared for another minute, blushing slightly when he realized he had been gazing at the expressionless occupant. "A-Ah, I didn't mean that as an insult! It's just that I wasn't expecting someone so pretty a-and, um, well, my best friend, Chinen Yuri, is the landlord of these apartments and kind of leaked that you lived here. Oh, but that's illegal isn't it, but, um, he did it because I've really liked you for a long time. I even became an utaite after listening to your voice! Your voice is incredible just like you! Ah, but I don't know you that well so I guess it's kind of arrogant for me to say that. Oh god, I'm rambling I, I um."

After a minute of silence from the other, Yuto shifted his gaze and scratched his head, holding a smile on his face. When he heard Yamada take a quiet breath to talk, he perked up to listen.

"Why do you keep smiling?"

Yuto cocked his head. He brushed his hair back, nervously laughing at the question.

"I'm not really sure. I've been wanting to meet you so much for the last three years, I just can't seem to shake the happiness I feel right now."

Yamada blushed a bit, almost unseeable, and relaxed his fists.

"You're honest," he whispered.

Yuto blushed, smiling, "sorry".

 

"You want to do a collaboration?", Yamada asked, his voice quiet and slow, each word carefully articulated to the very last syllable.

"If that's okay with you," Yuto replied, straightening his back when he realized that Yamada was looking.

"I don't usually do collaborations," Yamada murmured, staring down at the carpet. He heard Yuto shift on the couch and waited for the other to say that his condescending attitude was inappropriate or to insult him.

"It's fine if you don't want to," Yuto stated, adding after a moment, "you're really not at all as I imagined."

Yamada tensed. But this was part of the plan, whether condescending or introverted. "Sorr--"

"You're even better, really," Yuto beamed. "I had no idea ‘Ryo-chan’ had such a beautiful face behind him. You’re very cool too! I just feel really fulfilled that I'm one of the people who get to see you in real life."

Yamada held his breath, as if to hold in everything else with it. He looked at Yuto and then stalked off to his room, crawling under the covers to shield unwanted things like emotions, letting the loud cars penetrate his thoughts and deafen everything else.

 

The next day Yuto was back.

"Good morning, Yamada! You look handsome even in the morning! I brought soup as an apology for yesterday, I seemed to have upset you."

Yamada stared blankly before flinching and shaking his head profusely before slamming the door. He leaned against the door and slid to the ground, holding his hand against his beating chest. Not understanding, he stared at the walls and ceiling until he heard Yuto's footsteps retreat from his doorway.

 

After a week of soup being left at Yamada's front door, he began to regret slamming the door so suddenly. His gaze fixated on the ground, he quietly ate the soup sitting at his door mid-afternoon and waited for Yuto to return to take back the bowl.

Yuto was pleasantly surprised, beaming when he found Yamada sitting at the front door. Yamada twitched when he felt the warmth of the sun radiate from Yuto's smile, squeezing his hands to fists to try and repress whatever was making his heart kick at his chest.

"Good afternoon," Yuto stated, his voice calm but his grin wide.

"Afternoon," Yamada replied weakly, returning the bowl and quickly turning to return into his apartment. He froze as he was about to walk through, slowly looking back and stating in a tiny voice, "thank you for the meal", before closing the door.

 

Two weeks later, after sitting outside and waiting for Yuto to come to retrieve the bowl, Yamada allowed him inside.

When Yuto gave him a soft peck on the back of the head before bouncing off to the kitchen, Yamada's fingers shook with a feeling that he couldn't explain, that he had never felt. He grabbed at the edge of the couch cushion to steady his fingers. As quickly as the feeling came, it disappeared. The feeling was fleeting, and though it was warm, he preferred the neutralness that he had molded himself to fit. But along with the paradox life he had created, he found himself torn as he fought the urge to push the boy back out the door and the inaudible want to keep what he considered the warmth of the sun inside a human being beside him.

As Yamada ran through a million feelings that he never knew rested within him, Yuto peeked back in and told Yamada that he didn't have any ingredients suited for soup. "I'm going to run down to the complex's convenience store, do you want to come?" Yamada's brows scrunched up as he thought hard about whether he wanted to or not. Yuto gave a helpless smile, content with the show of emotions Yamada had begun to express. "We can pick up a strawberry snack too," Yuto added, remembering the various strawberry snack wrappers in the trash.

Yamada thought for a bit, before slightly nodding and pulling down on the hem of his shirt.

 

"What the heck?"

Chinen stared across the cash register counter at the oddly matched duo standing in front of him. Yamada's eyes stayed down to the ground as he tried to make his presence as little as possible, while Yuto's smile ignited all the cozy fireplaces, the sun, and happiness in the world (Yamada's thoughts).

Yuto slid the ingredients across the counter, along with two or three packets of pocky and hard candies, all strawberry flavored.

"Do you want anything else before we leave?" 

Yamada shook his head, looking down and playing with his fingers restlessly.

"What the heck?", Chinen repeated, leering at the two with a kind of confusion and questionability that seemed to burn holes into Yamada's tense frame. Yamada slid behind Yuto, who laughed and gave a beaming grin at his best friend. 

"Okay," Chinen said, stuffing the purchased items into the classic "Thank You" bag. "Take the food and enjoy your night. Don't worry about paying, it's on the house."

Yuto grinned appreciatively and glanced over at Yamada, as if to facilitate a proper, polite "thank you". Yamada glanced up at Chinen and gave him an apathetic and robotic "thank you", trailing behind Yuto.

When they returned, Yamada instinctively grabbed a box of strawberry pocky and ran for the room, only to be dragged back out to the dining table and have the pocky taken away. "No snacks before dinner," Yuto stated, smiling when the other blushed, "you're like a kid, Yamada."

 

It became a normality for Yuto to be by Yamada's side. Yuto's obvious comfort was both terrifying and easing to Yamada's slightly confused and tense state of mind.

Months had passed of late night comfortable silences and surreal days of leaving his apartment to go down a block, maybe two, with Yuto, but Yamada couldn't find the answer to the feelings that welled up in the rusty part of his heart. 

He started to realize his surroundings, the people behind the crowds, the emotions that swelled in each individual. 

It was frightening.

Everything came to color at once: the difference between the invisible life that people truly lived and the invisible life he had given himself and everyone around him. The true feeling of being in a crowd, where it isn't disappearance but a merge that crossed all feelings into each other, as if one giant puddle of emotions and sensations. But coming in terms with other's emotions meant coming in terms with his own.

Nostalgia that others felt bled into his body and he remembered the remote town he came from. He remembered the bathroom on the second floor of his middle school, where the taller boys towered above him and the sound of the lock of the last stall where he curled onto the toilet, singing to himself quietly to ignore the pounding and laughing on the other side. The loud, clanging arguing when his father's affair came to light and the screaming silence of the house when no one was home. He never had any particular emotion towards his father, but the silence that followed the storming footsteps of his mother and the slam of the front door always evoked a kind of pity, but also a kind of hatred. He felt the relief of looking at the middle school for the last time, dropout letter in hand. He remembered the feeling of coming to Tokyo and disappearing into the once muddled crowds.

The things that came with being with Yuto scared Yamada, and the things that would come when Yuto would vanish from his still half monochromatic world were horrifying.

More than anything, Yamada came to Tokyo to disappear to escape the idealism of living true to emotion.

More than anything, Yamada was terrified to re-emerge from the lost souls, those that were drowned and numbed by memories, of Tokyo.

 

"You know, Yamada has been looking kind of like a lost psycho lately."

Yuto stared at Chinen, confused.

"What does a lost psycho look like?"

"Well, you know, he looks like he's confused and scared but also like a damn psycho. Like he's ready to kill but also like he's going to pull some puppy eyes and curl up in a corner."

"Oh," Yuto replied, twirling some ramen onto his chopsticks, "okay".

"Kind of like when Ryutaro first got here. With the cigarette and tattoos and stuff."

"Ryutaro's past gangster self and Yamada are nothing alike," Yuto frowned.

"Yeah huh," Chinen retorted, poking at the last piece of beef on his plate, "Yamada looks exactly like Ryutaro when he first got here. Like he wants to turn into thin air. Then he'll meet someone completely opposite of him and soften up, but then get confused because the whole world turns in from a different perspective. You know, Ryutaro's midlife crisis where he basically made Keito cry every day until he realized that he hated seeing Keito cry."

"Well, Keito cries over everything, even when Ryutaro isn't bullying him."

"That's not the point."

 

Yuto found Yamada curled up in the corner of his bed, singing in a whisper to himself after a day of being in town. When they first went out, Yamada would come home and lock himself up every day, muttering about emotions and sensations. As time went on, it turned out like this: Yamada alone in the corner of the bed, singing to himself as a mother would to her son. It wasn't until Yuto had realized how Yamada's singing had become a remedy to any feeling, that of fear, discomfort, or pain, that he found himself compelled to be Yamada's music box.

"Hey," Yuto murmured, staring at Yamada's half lidded eyes.

Yamada ceased his singing for a second to lightly graze his fingers against Yuto's before continuing.

Yuto sat in silence, listening to the calming voice cradle the singer himself to sleep. He stared at the brunette, moving away a stray hair from his closed eyes.

"Tomorrow night," Yuto whispered, softly kissing the top of Yamada's forehead, "I'll sing for you."

 

It took two weeks for Yamada to wade through the memories and resurface in the present. Every day he'd walk through the streets or sit at home, always with Yuto, and run through the past that had brought him to Tokyo in a cinematic form. Day after day of falling asleep to his own singing coupled with Yuto's serene voice that brought him to a state of tranquility.

When he rose from the memories, he found Yuto still sitting on his bedside, as he did every day before, singing a tune he had long forgotten. Yamada glanced up at the other, staring with sleepy eyes at the immersed Yuto. He pondered the people he had saw, the feelings he had felt. He wondered of his disappearance and whether he truly disappeared. If he had disappeared, Yuto couldn't have found him. His thoughts trailed on until he come to the inevitable wonder of whether finding Ryo's underlying Yamada in the lost and found was really an event that Yuto didn't regret. Listening to the boy sing the song that started it all, though, made him question more of the things of the future than anything else. But in the end, he realized that he was content with how things were, just like this.

_"This world must be a world without absolutes. If only for just a moment, I want proof that I was by your side."_

Yuto smiled warmly when he realized Yamada had woken up, leaning over to kiss his cheek.

Yamada yawned and found Yuto's fingers from beneath the blanket, entwining theirs together.

 _"I want to tell you,"_ Yamada sung, continuing from Yuto's point, but stopped to pull himself up from the bed to crouch in front of the other.

"I love you," he whispered, leaning onto Yuto's chest.

 

_"The point is that people who lose bits and pieces of themselves forget the difference between content and happy. They begin to think the temporary happiness of dissolving into some emotionless isolation is contentment. But fleeting happiness could never become contentment. You somehow became the dictionary that has to guide him to the true definitions of happiness and contentment."_

_"Contentment...do you think he’ll feel content?"_

_"I think he will."_


End file.
